Thousands of anti-regime protesters called for foreign military intervention to bring down a Syrian government whose brutal crackdown on dissent monitors say has cost more than 9,100 lives.

The protests, held after weekly Muslim prayers, were called by activists on their Facebook page, Syrian Revolution 2011, to demand "immediate military intervention by the Arabs and Muslims, followed by the rest of the world."

Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said thousands of others took part in protests in the flashpoint provinces of Homs and across Daraa in the south as well as several districts of Damascus and the region.